Eastgate Drive realignment finally gets underway
Coun. John Findura was at the corner of Eastgate Drive and Coleman Crescent on Monday morning, watching the first steps of a project he’s awaited for years.
“The length of the project you could say has been a thorn in my side — it’s been dragging on,” he said of a permanent fix for a wellused access point for several eastend businesses. “Let’s get this thing moving.”
The city will spend $3 million on the work, which began on Monday and is expected to end in October. It will reroute Eastgate Drive south to Victoria Avenue. The plan also calls for a new bridge about 50 metres to the north of the temporary one that now crosses Pilot Butte Creek, keeping the link with Coleman Crescent.
Transportation manager Norman Kyle said the new design will be safer than the current intersection, which is too close to Victoria Avenue and sends vehicles through a complex pattern of turning movements.
“That was a conflict point that caused quite a few traffic incidents,” said Kyle.
The project will also preserve access to nearby businesses — a point of contention after the widening of Victoria Avenue to Prince of Wales Drive. In 2015, a city committee shot down a plan to simply close off Eastgate Drive, leaving councillors to devise today’s temporary solution. Findura said closure just wasn’t an option.
“If this was cut off everyone would have to go on Victoria Avenue and drive all the way around to Prince of Wales,” he said. “Residents and businesses in this area were not in favour of that.”
The new intersection will allow drivers to turn right to enter Eastgate Drive, and right again to exit back onto Victoria Avenue. There will be no left turns.
The work will go forward in phases. In a news release, the city said it will have “minimal impact” during the early stages but that traffic restrictions may be required.
Most of the money to pay for the project was approved in this year’s budget, with an extra $300,000 coming from engineering and design work that went through in 2017.